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Free China – The Courage to Believe

The film reveals the violations of human rights, which are still common practice in today‘s China. The documentary explores the conditions in the Chinese re-education program, the brutality of an authoritarian state to tens of millions of adherents of Falun Gong, as well as the efforts of their supporters to stop the persecution The film won several awards: it was the winner of the Free Speech Film Festival in Philadelphia, won the LA Awareness Film Festival award and was included in the 45th WorldFest Houston International.

Free China opens by showing how Mao Tse Tung and his sociopathic, communist followers intentionally and systematically attacked the moral foundations of ancient China. Mao’s movements, purges and pogroms including the infamous “cultural revolution” were aimed at the very soul of China.

This shortish documentary tells the story of two people living on opposite sides of the earth who were both persecuted for their belief in Falun Gong, a modern Chinese spiritual practice that combines Buddhism and Daoism. It follows the stories of Jennifer Zeng, a Communist party member living in Beijing and Dr. Charles Lee, a US citizen of Chinese birth, both of whom ran afoul of the Chinese government all because they would not give up their belief in a peaceful practice that the Party deemed evil.

Falun Gong, is a moral philosophy that arose in reaction to the communist depravations and seeks “truth, compassion, and tolerance” and advocates for the restoration of China’s historical values. While the communist regime has attacked every source of ethical standards from Tibetan Buddhism to American Evangelical “house churches”, it has been the practitioners of Falun Gong that have led the resistance and suffered the cost. They have conducted their peaceful civil disobedience with resolve that would make Gandhi and Martin Luther King proud.

The film is a step inside the repressive Chinese labor camp system, where the Falun Gong faithful are all sent for nothing more sinister than their belief in a mind-body practice that the government initially praised and encouraged. That is until there were more Falun Gong practitioners than Party members, at which time they labeled it an evil cult and made it’s practice a crime against the state.

Jennifer Zeng was a wife and mother and a regular member of the Party in good standing until she refused to give up her practice. She was thrown in jail and tortured both physically and mentally. Charles Lee wanted to help his fellow practitioners in China but was ultimately jailed as well, despite his USA citizenship. Both ultimately found their way to freedom and w0rked to let the world know that not only does the Chinese government use these political prisoners as forced labor, making many of the products we in the West buy, but they have been harvesting organs from these same prisoners for sale to the highest Western bidder.